Currently, Stukov is my lowest win rate hero. A portion of this has to do with him being a healer and playing a healer in QM is literal hell, but he’s also below 25% in my wins.
What’s the most optimal use of his trait? Why is his W so finicky? How often should I go into melee range to fist my opponent?
Basically, how do I Stukov better?
There’s 3 things I keep in mind with Stukov:
Stukov is one of the few heroes that has negative/trade-off functions on some of his talents. Some talent choices aren’t just made redundant, but they can actually reduce how well you heal/kill/peel/etc. eg. Universal Carrier (16) does reduce healing in favor of saving on mana, so it’s outright redundant with One good spread (4).
In my book, he’s split between offensive and defensive styles and players may be shooting themselves in the foot if they try to split between both. I’m not much for doing his w+e+r comboes for root/killing a target and I prefer to focus on throughput and peeling for allies. So for me, I try to save ‘e’ for vital interrupts or zoning, rather than securing kills. Since I don’t use w/e often, I don’t need to take his mana/saving talents.
I prefer his trait cdr talents so I can freely spam it as just more throughput, but for solo QM, maybe someone could be more successful by building around the aggressive plays and trying to get solo kills.
Heal/peel focus does mean I’m more reliant on allies not feeding and running out of range, while kill/focus means that if you aren’t getting picks, you’re probably not savings allies.
With organized play, he can probably fairly split between the two, but for pugs, I feel like he has to focus on one or the other, otherwise he’s just not going to do enough of either and it’ll feel like you can’t do anything right.
Another key distinction in play is how q/trait spread for healing. Some players prefer to self-Q and then walk around, while others will set it on an ally, and then position themselves to get the bounce and spread it that way. There is some delay in the methods that can make/break healing an ally in time, especially if you’re waiting for a count on trait-heal spikes.
Since most of the healing is a ‘dot’, it usually has to be out on allies before hand where some players try to panic-cast and get it onto an ally and end up with it being to late. While stukov and rehgar are similar in the hit-and-bounce healing, the timing and priority on how they do that is different. Kinda like kerrigan vs Alarak type of different.
Here, i can give some more specific how to play.
Stukov is a very different kind of healer. Hes slow and deliberate and all his abilities are very strange. You cant be spamming anything hes got, everything must be cast with a specific perpous.
Lets start with Q. Probbably the closest hes got to a normal ability. Q on its own sucks. The hps is very low and it only gets mana/cooldown efficient when your healing everyone around you. Still, this is the one ability you should use mostly on cooldown but the mark of a good stukov has almost nothing to do with this ability.
W!
This is probably his second most important ability. There are 2 ways to use this ability.
First, its decent for getting picks and starting fights. Especially if you take the range talent. If an enemy looks like they want to start moving away from you, hit them with this for potentially an easy kill.
Second, as a combo tool with E or massive shove.
With E, you want to slow someone first and then immediately E them for a more potent silence. Similar thing with shove. If your not gonna be pushing someone very far, consider Wing them first to keep them away from you longer.
And then, this ability can sorta peel but the wind up on its slow makes it not great at peeling. If someone needs peeling either you didn’t help start a clean enough fight, or its time to ult.
E it both a 10/10 follow up tool and area denial.
Follow up is fairly self explanatory. You want to keep an eye out for how your tank is playing and look for good setups with your own slows. The silence is good but this also just does a lot of damage to.
Area denial can be a bit more tricky but using it in this way can give you more freedom with how you use your W. Any choke point, corner enemies are looking to move around, and points like braxis obj or merc camps are the types of places you look for when using this for area denial.
When to use Stukov’s trait is his most important ability a big decision your going to have to make every fight. Your trait is the only way to get good healing out of stukov. That being said, holding trait specifically for when people get low is often not the best way to use it.
Dead enemies deal no damage and using your trait to ensure a kill is often better. Traited Ws are among the most powerful and longest lasting slows in the game even when compared to ults.
One more thing to look out for with stukovs trait is using it at the last second will make it more effective. Learning when you have to immediately trait or when you can wait for maximum effectiveness is an important part of getting good at stuk.
Your auto attacks!
https://psionic-storm.com/en/units/#d=aa-dmg&sort-values=1
https://psionic-storm.com/en/units/#d=aa-dps&sort-values=1
Look to use them!
You are still a squishy, mostly defenseless healer so safely AAing can be tricky but its the hardest hitting AA in the game and even its dps is very good despite its slow attack speed, even compared to actual auto attackers.
If a fights ever safe for you to enter, you can absolutely 100-0 someone with autos and well timed slows. Stuk can even be a decent duelist against some heroes and if your good enough.
Both ults look similar but do very different things.
Flailing Swipe. If a fight looks bad, ult to immediately end the fight. It can also be used as a combo tool when combined with another heroes “pull” to some extent. If an enemy gets hooked, ult the rest of the enemy team to further ensure the kill. This tech can obloterate an anduin who was trying to counter pick your teams stitches for example.
You can also use this ult to “stun” enemies against walls like a how level 20 falstad gust. Just be careful not to spread enemies out when your doing this.
Then Massive Shove. Take this against single threats that you dont want near your team. This can also be good against heroes who give them selves powerful buffs.
Stuff like chogall, whitemane, tass when he goes archon, sonya when she goes wrath, greymane when he goes wolf.
Thats its primary use and because of its low cooldown, youll want to look to do this almost every time you interact with these heroes and abilites.
You can also massive shove people in to your base for an insta kill. Its fun to do but dont go out of your way to make it happen. You massively sacrifice your position to do this.
Finally imma talk about some notable talents.
Now, you dont always take these talents but when they are good, holy heck are they good.
Simply taking all the mentioned talents together is not going to give you a solid build. You need to be extremely flexible with his talents. Far more so then with other healers.
Reactive Ballistospores at 1 is busted. Your basically taking an ult at level 1 and its a huge power spike you absolutely want to leverage. You can potentially get 8 seconds or so of stukov’s god slow on someone.
There are also a lot of little tricks and combos a second trait can make available to you. For example, at 13, you can double root someone with Virulent Reaction or “living bomb spread” people with Poppin’ Pustules for some surprising damage.
If your looking to take an important early lead of if you think the games gonna be very team fight centric, this is a really strong talent.
Biotic Armor can really shut down AA heavy teams and Vigorous Reuptake can do similarly well against heavy burst. Both at 4
The range Long Pitch offers at 7 will make you better at getting picks. Your traited slow is powerful enough that even if you hit this at max range, you and your team can still catch up to your target.
Targeted Excision also at 7, does a similar thing except you trade the longer range for better cooldown reduction. This is the overall better of the two. However, Long Pitch is great is interrupting rotations and ganking enemies as they rotate.
Virulent Reaction at 13. Its a root. CC is good.
This will make you even better at starting fights and getting picks.
It Hungers at 13 combined with Growing Infestation at 7 will make you extremely annoying any time your fighting in an enclosed space or against enemies who tend to group up a lot.
Superstrain at 16 is just straight up op against teams with lots of hard CC. Theres no cooldown between heals so chain CC can end up healing your team more then it hurts them.
And even if theres only 1 or 2 CCs the enemy is trying to get a pick with, it can still be good. Diablo for example.
Universal Carrier at 16 gets a bad rap because it says it lowers your healing but stukov’s healing was never good to begin with so your not really losing much to begin with and your traited healing stays just as good.
PLEASE dont take this talent because it saves you mana. Mana doesn’t matter at this stage of the game.
Heres what this talent is really actually good for. You cant cast Q while channeling E so if your ever in a situation when you channel E for long periods of time, this is the only way you can heal. same goes for massive shove.
Universal Carrier is also particularly good when combined with Biotic Armor for near permanent physical armor.
The final thing this talent is good for is it lets you be more flexible with your healing. Normally when your going for a trait heal, you have to wait for Q to spread first which can take anywhere between 1.5 or 3 seconds which is ages in moba time. With Universal Carrier, your Q is already spread to everyone. Then once you have traited, you can instantly start the Q train again.
In other words, Universal Carrier will make it easier to react to incoming damage.
And then if your looking for a more universally good build, its hard to go wrong with E build.
I’ve only played Stukov in Aram, which makes it different because you can use Lurking arm in a choke point to make it different for enemies to pass. I think this can be applied to most maps during objectives, bosses, etc.
In a word, Stukov is ‘Patience’, let your healing spread and your gross purple ability spread then wait for the perfect time to hit the switch. Even if it runs out, that’s fine you didn’t actually waste anything.
Both Ults are good.